Hong Kong actress Carman Lee recently made a comeback after retiring from showbiz for nine years. Unfortunately, her return was tainted when a “drugging incident” involving her resurfaced.

Recently, a netizen revealed on Weibo that a well-known actor currently filming at the Hengdian World Studios had bought a drug for male use on July 2, and even attached a screenshot of the correspondence between said actor and the drug seller. Although this piece of news has not been verified, it brought up a “drugging incident” that occurred in Hengdian in 2003.

Rumour has it that while filming the drama Wu Dang in 2003, Carman had run into a band of criminals who blew drugging mist into the drama’s production team’s four hotel rooms, causing everyone to fall into a deep slumber and allowing the robbers to get away with whatever they took.

When the media approached Carman for confirmation of this incident, she appeared to still be haunted by the ordeal: “It was 9am in the morning on that day; I was the first to wake up, feeling pain all over my body. [I] was dizzy, just as if I had eaten flu medicine. I wanted to wake the assistant next to me, but [I] really didn’t have the strength, so I continued sleeping.”

“At around 12pm, I realised that the hotel staff was in the room, preparing to clean up. [I] was very baffled, because my room door was locked from the inside, and [I] put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. [When] I asked her how she got in, she stammered and couldn’t answer, so I warned her not to do it again. However, [I] did not find anything weird with the room at that time,” she added.

It was only at 2pm when the actress realised that something was very wrong. Her assistant had found her phone missing when she got up, and Carman searched all over the room for it, to no avail. She also noticed that the room was messier than usual, and there were signs that the luggage had been rummaged through: “We had a feeling that we had been robbed”.

However, Carman’s recount of the day’s happenings was met with strong opposition and anger from the manager of the hotel. He claimed that the reports had put the hotel in a bad light, and he would not hesitate to seek legal help if it was found that someone had staged the whole debacle to gain attention.

Carman’s manager stepped forward to back the star’s story, saying: “Carman slept in the room beside mine. At that time, drugging mist was blown through the crack under the door; I was unconscious for 11 hours. After [we] checked, [we] found that two hand phones and RMB$4000 (approximately S$800) were gone.”